A serious problem which faces the electronic publishing and software industries is the ease with which digital information can be copied without authorization from the publisher. Digital information also may be used or modified without authorization. For example, computer software may be reverse engineered or attacked by computer viruses.
There are many mechanisms available which may be used to limit or prevent access to digital information. Such mechanisms often either restrict the ability of the user to make back-up copies or involve the use of special purpose hardware to limit access to the digital information. For example, some mechanisms restrict the use of digital information to a particular machine. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,817,140. Other mechanisms require the digital information to be stored on a particular recording medium in order to be used. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,412,718. Yet other mechanisms allow only a certain number of uses of the digital information. See for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,888,798. Many of these access control mechanisms cause distribution to be more costly.
Several other patents describe a variety of systems for encryption, compression, licensing and royalty control and software distribution such as: U.S. Pat. No. 4,405,829, U.S. Pat. No. 4,864,616, U.S. Pat. No. 4,888,800, U.S. Pat. No. 4,999,806, U.S. Pat. No. 5,021,997, U.S. Pat. No. 5,027,396, U.S. Pat. No. 5,033,084, U.S. Pat. No. 5,081,675, U.S. Pat No. 5,155,847, U.S. Pat. No. 5,166,886, U.S. Pat. No. 5,191,611, U.S. Pat. No. 5,220,606, U.S. Pat No. 5,222,133, U.S. Pat. No. 5,272,755, U.S. Pat. No. 5,287,407, U.S. Pat. No. 5,313,521, U.S. Pat No. 5,325,433, U.S. Pat. No. 5,327,563, U.S. Pat. No. 5,337,357, U.S. Pat. No. 5,351,293, U.S. Pat No. 5,341,429, U.S. Pat. No. 5,351,297, U.S. Pat. No. 5,361,359, U.S. Pat. No. 5,379,433, U.S. Pat No. 5,392,351, U.S. Pat. No. 5,394,469, U.S. Pat. No. 5,414,850, U.S. Pat. No. 5,473,687, U.S. Pat No. 5,490,216, U.S. Pat. No. 5,497,423, U.S. Pat. No. 5,509,074, U.S. Pat. No. 5,,511,123, U.S. Pat. No. 5,524,072, U.S. Pat. No. 5,532,920, U.S. Pat. No. 5,555,304, U.S. Pat. No. 5,557,346, U.S. Pat. No. 5,557,765, U.S. Pat. No. 5,592,549, U.S. Pat. No. 5,615,264, U.S. Pat. No. 5,625,692, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,638,445.
Computer programs or other digital information also may be encrypted in order to prevent an individual from making a useful copy of the information or from reverse engineering a program. Even with such encryption, however, a computer program must be decrypted in order for a computer to load and execute the program. Similarly, other digital information must be decrypted before it can be accessed and used. Generally, digital information is decrypted to disk, and not to main memory of the computer which is more protected by the operating system, because decryption to main memory results in a significant loss of memory resources. If the purpose for using encryption is to prevent users from copying the digital information, then decryption of the information to accessible memory for use defeats this purpose.
One way to protect digital information using encryption has been made available by International Business Machines (IBM) and is called a "CRYPTOLOPE" information container. This technology is believed to be related to U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,563,946 and 5,598,470 (to Cooper et al.), and published European patent applications 0679977, 0679978, 0679979 and 0681233. The CRYPTOLOPE system requires a user to have a "helper application" and a key. The CRYPTOLOPE information container is generated by IBM. The content provider submits data to IBM, which in turn encrypts and packages the data in a CRYPTOLOPE information container. The helper application is a form of memory resident program, called a terminate and stay resident (TSR) program, which is a form of input/output (I/O) device driver installed in the operating system and which monitors requests from the operating system for files on specified drives and directories. Because the TSR program must know the directory, and/or file name to be accessed, that information also is available to other programs. Other programs could use that information to manipulate the operation of the TSR program in order to have access to decrypted contents of the information container. The encrypted information container includes an executable stub which is executed whenever the application is run without the installed TSR program or from a drive not monitored by the TSR program to prevent unpredictable activity from executing encrypted code. This stub may be used to install decryption and cause the application be executed a second time, or to communicate with the TSR program to instruct the TSR program to monitor the drive. It may be preferable from the point of view of the content provider however to maintain an encryption process and keys independently of any third party.
Multimedia content, such as a movie or hypertext presentation also may be stored on a digital versatile disk (DVD), sometimes called a digital video disk, compact disk read-only memory (CD-ROM), rewriteable compact disks (CD-RW) or other medium in an encrypted digital format for use with special-purpose devices. For example, concern about illegal copying of content from digital video disks or other digital media has resulted in a limited amount of content being available for such devices. This problem has caused representatives of both multimedia providers and digital video disk manufacturers to negotiate an agreement on an encryption format for information stored on DVDs. This copy protection scheme is licensed through an organization called the CSS Interim Licensing organization. However, in this arrangement, the content provider is limited to using the agreed upon encryption format and a device manufacturer is limited to using a predetermined decryption system.
Encryption has also been used to protect and hide computer viruses. Such viruses are typically polymorphic, i.e., they change every time they infect a new program, and are encrypted. The virus includes a decryption program that executes to decrypt the virus every time the infected program is run. Such viruses are described, for example, in "Computer Virus-Antivirus Coevolution" by Carey Nachenberg, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 40, No. 1, (January 1997), p. 46 et seq. Such viruses include decryption keys within them since, clearly, their execution is not carried out by the user and a user would not be asked for authorization keys to permit execution of the viruses. Additionally, such viruses are typically only executed once at the start of execution of an infected program and permanently return control to the infected program after execution.